Friday, September 7, 2012

5 lessons from the Quebec student strike

The historic Quebec student strike has generated a number of
lessons we can all take forward in the fight against austerity.

1. We can beat austerity

Premier Charest tried to raise
tuition 75% to further the neoliberal assault on education and provoke
students—hoping to use the resulting polarization right-wing populism to win
another election. Students were subject to media attacks, ridicule from the
Premier, police violence, and the draconian Bill 78—revealing the extent to
which the 1% will go to impose austerity.

Yet the student movement remained
united, mobilized wider support and built a historic movement that played a key
role in running Charest out of office, out of his own seat, and securing the
promise of the incoming PQ to abolish the tuition hike and revoke Bill 78 (law
12). In the process hundreds of thousands of students were educated in a
semester of resistance that will shape struggles to come and have inspired
people across Canada and around the world. Who’s laughing now, Mr. Charest?

2. Resistance is a process not an event

Though the Quebec Spring appeared
to come out of nowhere for people outside Quebec, it has been a long time
coming. Quebec’s history of resistance to national oppression has contributed
to making it the site of the largest social movements of the last decade—from
the anti-globalization protests of 2001, the anti-war protests of 2003 (which
stopped Canada from officially participation), the mass May Day protest of
2004, and the mass student strike of 2005. The last strike, the latest in a
history of student strikes in Quebec, trained a generation of student activists
and defeated the government’s $103 million cuts to education.

This collective experience in
Quebec became intertwined with the 2011 year of revolt triggered by the Arab
spring to produce the “printemps érable.” The 2012 strike drew on local and
global to build a mass strike from the ground up, department by department and
campus by campus—an experience that can’t be spontaneously summoned but must be
patiently built if we want to spread the Quebec spring.

3. Politics matter

It was not simply the scale of
the attacks—from the 75% tuition hike to Bill 78’s attack on civil
liberties—that spontaneously produced mass resistance, or the existence of
general assemblies in the abstract. The politics that dominated the assemblies
built the movement in a way that was both broad and radical.

First, the movement was built in
an inclusive way so as to mobilize the greatest amount of opposition. While many
at the heart of the movement believe in free education, the strike was
initiated on the simple demand of “stop the hike”, to mobilize the greatest
unity on this primary demand—and the resulting mass participation allowed for
people to radicalize. When
Charest imposed Bill 78, the movement responded by appealing to all those
affected to rally in defense of civil liberties. By doing so the student strike
turned the tables on Charest and broadened the resistance—encouraging casserole
demonstration by many who had previously not taken part in the protests.

At the same time, a simple basis
of unity against tuition hike and Bill 78 were framed in a context against
austerity that built alliances with other groups—from the April 22 earth day
demonstration that linked the student movement with the environmental movement
against Plan Nord, to the solidarity with the locked out workers in Alma. As a
result the student movement became a broader social movement.

4. Left parties can amplify movements

The history of social movements
in Quebec has given rise to the left alternative Québec solidaire, a “party of
the ballot box and the streets”, whose one MNA Amir Khadir was able to be a megaphone for
the movement—encouraging resistance Bill 78, and getting arrested while joining
the protests.

The election
was dominated by two opposite but reinforcing currents that squeezed QS: a "radical" abstentionism that counterposes the streets and the ballot box and dismisses
the importance of QS—surrendering the electoral terrain to the right—and an “anyone but Charest” argument that bolsters the
PQ. But the disillusionment with the PQ and Liberals meant that they both lost
support, with a right-wing populism turning with the CAQ.

Despite these dominant
currents, QS won two seats (with well known feminist Françoise David joining
Amir Khadir), came in second in two others, and increased their percentage of
the vote. Combined with the higher voter turnout, this represents an important
increase in support for QS—a doubling of the vote from 2008. QS helped build the Quebec spring and was in turn shaped by it, with many students joining its ranks, and is in a stronger position to continue giving voice to the movements in the future.

5. La lutte continue

This has
just been the first chapter of the printemps érable. The support for the PQ is
shallow, there is anger at the Liberals and false hope in the CAQ, like the ADQ
before it, and all will show their united support for neoliberalism. The
movement will need to keep asserting itself in the streets, campuses,
neighbourhoods and workplaces, amplified by QS--to ensure the PQ maintains its promise of revoking the hike and the law, and to push the movement forward.

Unfortunately NDP leader Thomas Mulcair told his MPs not to support the student strike and then announced the NDP will run provincially—against QS. But the rapid spread of casserole
demonstrations across the country shows the growing solidarity with Quebec and
a desire to fight austerity locally. We need to learn the lessons of the
Quebec spring by building broad movements from below, and having left parties that
amplify and not dampen movements.